President Trump, seen walking out to the Rose Garden at the White House on Tuesday, has repeatedly decried the investigation as a "witch hunt."

President Trump, seen walking out to the Rose Garden at the White House on Tuesday, has repeatedly decried the investigation as a "witch hunt."

Photo: Washington Post Photo By Jabin Botsford

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Probes into Russia, Trump campaign

An FBI investigation and congressional probes into the Trump campaign and contacts with Russia continue to shadow the administration, each new development a focus of White House press briefings and attention on Capitol Hill. President Donald Trump has dismissed the story as "fake news" and raised allegations of politically inspired spying by the Obama administration, but the investigations show no sign of abating anytime soon. Here's a look at some key details less

An FBI investigation and congressional probes into the Trump campaign and contacts with Russia continue to shadow the administration, each new development a focus of White House press briefings and attention on ... more

Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

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April 3, 2018

A federal judge sentenced Alex van der Zwaan (center) to 30 days in prison for lying to investigators about conversations he had with Rick Gates. It is the first prison sentence handed down in the Mueller investigation. less

April 3, 2018

A federal judge sentenced Alex van der Zwaan (center) to 30 days in prison for lying to investigators about conversations he had with Rick Gates. It is the first prison sentence handed down in the ... more

Paul Manafort and Richard Gates were criminally indicted on 12 counts, including money laundering, violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, conspiracy against the U.S., and failure to report foreign bank accounts to the U.S. government.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was questioned for hours in the special counsel's Russia investigation, the Justice Department said, as prosecutors moved closer to a possible interview with President Donald Trump about whether he took steps to obstruct an FBI probe into contacts between Russia and his 2016 campaign. The interview with Sessions in January made him the highest-ranking Trump administration official, and first Cabinet member, known to have submitted to questioning. It came as special counsel Robert Mueller investigates whether Trump's actions in office, including the firing of FBI Director James Comey, constitute improper efforts to stymie the FBI investigation.

The same day former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was called to testify behind closed doors for the House investigation, the New York Times reported that he was subpoenaed by Mueller to testify before a grand jury.

On Jan. 8, The Washington Post reported that Mueller spoke with Trump's attorney's indicating that he would likely seek to interview the president as part of his investigation. Later, in a news conference with the prime minister of Norway, President Tump told a reporter that an interview out not be necessary because "there is no collusion."

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI, becoming the first Trump White House official to face criminal charges and admit guilt so far in the wide-ranging election investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. Flynn also agreed to cooperate with Mueller's probe, which focuses on Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible coordination between Russia and Donald Trump's campaign aimed at sending the Republican businessman to the White House.

Papadopoulos pleads guilty to making false statements to the FBI, as part of apparent agreement to cooperate with Mueller's investigation. Mueller files 12 count criminal indictments against Manafort and Gates.

July 2017: FBI agents conducted a raid at former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's home in Alexandria, Virginia. Papadopoulos arrested by FBI at Dulles International Airport.

July 2017: FBI agents conducted a raid at former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's home in Alexandria, Virginia. Papadopoulos arrested by FBI at Dulles International Airport.

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

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June 2017: Manafort files paperwork with the Justice Department retroactively disclosing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act that his firm received more than $17 million working for the government of Ukraine between 2012 and 2014. The Washington Post reports that Mueller is investigating Trump for obstruction of justice.

June 2017: Manafort files paperwork with the Justice Department retroactively disclosing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act that his firm received more than $17 million working for the government of

May 2017: Trump fires Comey. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed as special counsel to take over the probe.

May 2017: Trump fires Comey. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is appointed as special counsel to take over the probe.

Photo: Jon Elswick, STF / Associated Press

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January 2017: FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, briefs Trump on contents of unverified dossier that contains salacious allegations about him and his campaign. Trump inaugurated as 45th President of the United States. Papadopoulos interviewed by the FBI about his contacts with Russians.

January 2017: FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, briefs Trump on contents of unverified dossier that contains

The New York Times reports that Manafort's name appears on a secret list of payments made by the Yanukovych regime. Manafort resigns from Trump campaign the day after The Associated Press reports he failed to register as a foreign agent after arranging a covert lobbying campaign in the United States on behalf of the Ukrainian Party of Regions.

July 2016: Trump becomes the Republican nominee for president at the party's convention in Cleveland, Ohio. FBI opens investigation into Russian government's attempt to influence the election, including whether members of Trump's campaign are involved.

July 2016: Trump becomes the Republican nominee for president at the party's convention in Cleveland, Ohio. FBI opens investigation into Russian government's attempt to influence the election, including

June 2016: Manafort attends meeting at Trump Tower in New York with Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya (above), who promised to provide the Trump campaign damaging information about Clinton. Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner are also in the meeting. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says his website will publish a batch of Clinton emails.

June 2016: Manafort attends meeting at Trump Tower in New York with Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya (above), who promised to provide the Trump campaign damaging information about Clinton. Donald

May 2016: Manafort promoted to campaign chairman and chief strategist, taking command of the Trump campaign.

May 2016: Manafort promoted to campaign chairman and chief strategist, taking command of the Trump campaign.

Photo: Patrick T. Fallon / Bloomberg

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April 2016: Papadopoulos meets with Russian national who he says offered "dirt" on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, including thousands of emails. Papadopoulos emails other members of Trump campaign about Russian offer of dirt on Clinton and offer for Trump to meet with Putin. Democratic National Committee becomes aware of the scope of the months-long intrusion into its email systems by hackers U.S. intelligence agencies later linked to the Russian government.

April 2016: Papadopoulos meets with Russian national who he says offered "dirt" on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, including thousands of emails. Papadopoulos emails other members of Trump

March 2016: Manafort joins Trump campaign as a volunteer consultant. George Papadopoulos is named one of five foreign policy advisers to the Trump campaign, and meets with people associated with the Russia government amid discussions to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin.

March 2016: Manafort joins Trump campaign as a volunteer consultant. George Papadopoulos is named one of five foreign policy advisers to the Trump campaign, and meets with people associated with the Russia

September 2015: The FBI contacts the Democratic National Committee's IT help desk, cautioning that at least one of its computers has been compromised by Russian hackers. A technician scans the system but fails to find evidence of the intrusion.

September 2015: The FBI contacts the Democratic National Committee's IT help desk, cautioning that at least one of its computers has been compromised by Russian hackers. A technician scans the system but

June 2015: New York real estate billionaire Donald J. Trump announces his candidacy for U.S. president as a Republican.

June 2015: New York real estate billionaire Donald J. Trump announces his candidacy for U.S. president as a Republican.

Photo: Richard Drew

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February 2014: Following months of violent clashes between protesters and police across Ukraine, Yanukovych flees Ukraine and enters exile in Russia. U.S. government later opens investigation into Manafort's foreign lobbying and political work.

February 2014: Following months of violent clashes between protesters and police across Ukraine, Yanukovych flees Ukraine and enters exile in Russia. U.S. government later opens investigation into Manafort's

February 2010: With the help of his Russian patrons and his American political consultants, Yanukovych is elected president of Ukraine.

February 2010: With the help of his Russian patrons and his American political consultants, Yanukovych is elected president of Ukraine.

Photo: AP

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2006: Paul Manafort and Rick Gates (left) begin work as consultants for the Party of Regions, a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine led by Victor Yanukovych, the country's former prime minister. Manafort is a veteran Republican political operative who worked on the U.S. presidential campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole.

2006: Paul Manafort and Rick Gates (left) begin work as consultants for the Party of Regions, a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine led by Victor Yanukovych, the country's former prime minister. Manafort is

Mueller raised possibility of presidential subpoena in meeting with Trump's legal team

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WASHINGTON - In a tense meeting in early March with the special counsel, President Donald Trump's lawyers insisted he had no obligation to talk with federal investigators probing Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

But Special Counsel Robert Mueller responded that he had another option if Trump declined: He could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, according to four people familiar with the encounter.

Mueller's warning - the first time he is known to have mentioned a possible subpoena to Trump's legal team - spurred a sharp retort from John Dowd, then the president's lead lawyer.

"This isn't some game," Dowd said, according to two people with knowledge of his comments. "You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States."

The flare-up set in motion weeks of turmoil among Trump's attorneys as they debated how to deal with the special counsel's request for an interview, a dispute that ultimately led to Dowd's resignation.

In the wake of the testy March 5 meeting, Mueller's team agreed to provide the president's lawyers with more specific information about the subjects that prosecutors wished to discuss with the president. With those details in hand, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow compiled a list of 49 questions that the team believed the president would be asked, according to three of the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly. The New York Times first reported the existence of the list.

The questions focus on events during the Trump campaign, transition and presidency that have long known to be under scrutiny, including the president's reasons for firing then-FBI Director James Comey and the pressure he put on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign.

Now Trump's newly reconfigured legal team is pondering how to address the special counsel's queries, all while assessing the potential evidence of obstruction that Mueller might present and contending with a client who has grown increasingly opposed to sitting down with the special counsel.

Without a resolution on the interview, the standoff could turn into a historic confrontation before the Supreme Court over a presidential subpoena.

Sekulow and Dowd declined to comment. Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the special counsel, declined to comment.

The president has repeatedly decried the investigation as a "witch hunt."

"Oh, I see...you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!" Trump tweeted Tuesday.

Trump's remade legal team is now led by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who told The Washington Post on Tuesday that he views Mueller as the utmost professional, but is still reviewing documents and considering conditions he might set before deciding whether to recommend that Trump agree to an interview.

"Hopefully we're getting near the end. We all on both sides have some important decisions to make," Giuliani said. "I still have a totally open mind on what the right strategy is, which we'll develop in the next few weeks."

In the meantime, Trump's lawyers are also considering whether to provide Mueller with written explanations of the episodes he is examining. After investigators laid out 16 specific subjects they wanted to review with the president and added a few topics within each one, Sekulow broke the queries down into 49 separate questions, according to people familiar with the process.

Paul Rosenzweig, who worked as a senior counsel on independent counsel Ken Starr's investigation during the Clinton administration, predicted that the president would face a long interview if the special counsel hewed to the list Sekulow compiled.

"This isn't a list of 49 questions. It's 49 topics," Rosenzweig said. "Each of these topics results in dozens of questions. To be honest, that list is a two-day interview. You don't get through it in an hour or two."

For his part, Trump fumed when he saw the breadth of the questions that emerged out of the talks with Mueller's team, according to two White House officials.

The president and several advisers now plan to point to the list as evidence that Mueller has strayed beyond his mandate and is overreaching, they said.

"He wants to hammer that," according to a person who spoke to him Monday.

"Mueller is in Kenny Starr territory now," said another Trump adviser, referring to how the controversial independent counsel investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton's real estate deals in Arkansas ended up probing the president's lies about a sexual relationship with a White House intern.

Trump advisers are particularly frustrated by the Mueller team's focus on whether Trump was obstructing justice by trying to push last summer for Sessions to resign. If the attorney general had stepped down, Trump could have chosen a replacement who was not recused from running the Russian investigation.

Dowd has repeatedly argued that the president has ultimate authority under the Constitution to fire or demote any of his appointees and that his firing decisions cannot be used as evidence of obstruction.

The revelation of the scope of the questions before the president's team could further complicate recently renewed talks between the special counsel and Trump's attorneys about a possible interview.

Last week, Giuliani met with Mueller to reopen negotiations for a presidential interview.

Giuliani conveyed the ongoing resistance of Trump and his advisers to a sit-down but did not rule out the possibility. Still, Trump remains strongly opposed to granting Mueller an interview - resistance fueled largely by the raids last month on the office and residences of his personal attorney Michael Cohen.

Trump's anger over the Cohen raids spilled into nearly every conversation in the days that followed and continues to be a sore point for the president. One confidant said Trump seems to "talk about it 20 times a day." Other associates said they often stand silent, in person or on the phone, as he vents about the Cohen matter, knowing that there is little they can say.

Alan Dershowitz, a well-known lawyer and Trump advocate, said Tuesday that it would be dangerous and unwise for Trump to agree to an interview.

"The strategy is to throw him softballs so that he will go on and on with his answers," he said. "Instead of sharp questions designed to elicit yes or no, they make him feel very comfortable and let him ramble."

In that setting, Dershowitz said, the prosecutors could catch Trump in a misstatement.

Should Mueller seek to compel Trump's testimony using a subpoena, a legal battle could ensue that could delay the investigation and force the issue into the courts, potentially to the Supreme Court.

Trump's team could argue that Mueller was seeking information about the president's private conversations that are protected by executive privilege or that a grand jury interview would place an unnecessary burden on the president's ability to run the country.

Judges have generally held that the president is not above the law and can be subjected to normal legal processes - but the issue of a presidential subpoena for testimony has not been tested in court. Starr subpoenaed President Bill Clinton for grand jury testimony in 1998 but withdrew it after Clinton agreed to testify voluntarily. He was interviewed at the White House, appearing before the grand jury via video.

Rosenzweig, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said judges generally like to accommodate a president because he has to be free to "manage the affairs of the world and deal with nuclear war without having to worry about whether he has to show up for an interview the next day."

But, he added, courts are loath to say the president can't be investigated.

"The opposite argument is that no man is above the law, and if it's a lawful investigation, then he must respond," Rosenzweig said.

Some legal experts believe that two Justice Department opinions prohibit federal prosecutors, including Mueller, from charging a president with a crime. Instead, they said, the Constitution relies on Congress' power to impeach as the route to hold a president accountable for potentially criminal behavior.

Trump's lawyers could then argue that he cannot be forced to testify under subpoena, unless his testimony is necessary to indict someone else.

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The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.